And we have another interesting development in the ongoing and ever-expanding idiocy that is the War of the High-Fiving Lawyers Mobile Patent World War. Motorola, now a central player in this worldwide conflict that is hurting consumers' wallets and clogging legal systems all over the world, has come to HTC's rescue by seeking to invalidate the patents Apple sued HTC with earlier this year.

Getting rid of patents isn't the answer though - companies aren't going to spend millions on R&D unless they have some sort of protection. Give them a much smaller timeframe of exclusivity / licensing rights - five or ten years - after which it reverts to some form of open license where the originator has to be credited

Not sure much of this is right, R & D they probably will spend as they have no choice you innovate or die, they would still be protected by copyright, i.e their competitors would have to work out how to implement the innovation.

5 - 10 years 10 years is far too long 2 - 4 might be reasonable (and for real innovations not just an idea I had whilst in the bath). In the tech industries if you can't make your innovation work in that time scale you can't make it work.

Why credit an idea? (your car doesn't have a list of credits to say who invented the camshaft etc) if you use others work, then again your covered by copyright and should be credited.

The patent system is broken and doesn't do as it was intended promote innovation. The reason it hasn't been fixed is that large corporations and possibly more importantly powerful states see that see IP as something that distinguishes them from the emerging companies and economies and they do not want to give up this edge.

This will fail unless it is reasonable, India, China etc will not indefinitely pay an IP tax to the US etc. They will not submit to rules that indefinitely prevent their companies from developing and innovating.